The Name of the Wind, by Patrick Rothfuss

The Name of the Wind, by Patrick Rothfuss.  Daw Books, 2007.  722 pp.  978-0-7564-0474-1.

... in which Kvothe, tragic legendary hero extraordinaire, tells a story of magic, death, betrayal, love, and music.

The trouble with traditional fantasy epics is that, after awhile, they all sort of start to sound the same.  Scrappy young man leaves his little home village, travels the world, does great deeds, gets kicked around a bit, saves everyone from a horrible fate, returns home.  The story is typically told in third person, and typically has some kind of happy resolution, and the hero is usually charming and plucky enough to make the reader love him unconditionally.

Patrick Rothfuss has done something notable in that he has taken this formula and has created something marvelous without actually deviating from the formula that much.  The Name of the Wind is the first installment (Day 1) of the Kingkiller Chronicles, a trilogy of novels following our hero (or anti-hero, in some respects) Kvothe through his adventures as a young man.

The story takes place in two separate timelines.  In the present, Kvothe is hiding out in disguise as an innkeeper in a tiny, out-of-the-way village.  He spends his days serving ale and mopping floors, and generally keeping a low profile.  One day a story teller, who calls himself the Chronicler, comes in search of Kvothe to get his story.  The second timeline is the timeline of the past, as Kvothe retells his story, in the first person, to the Chronicler.  Kvothe promises to tell the Chronicler his story over the span of three days; this book constitutes the part of the story told on the first day.

From the beginning, it is clear that Kvothe is a remarkable person.  As a child, he was extremely intelligent and precocious.  His youth is spend traveling with his large extended family, a troupe of performers who live a gypsy-like life and travel from town to town entertaining people.  Along the way, the troupe picks up a traveler, who happens to be knowledgeable in the sciences, philosophy, old legends, and ancient magic.  He lays the groundwork for young Kvothe's education.  Then, tragedy strikes Kvothe's traveling family, and Kvothe is left as the only survivor from a seemingly senseless act of brutality carried out by a mysterious and inhuman enemy.  After some years spent as a street urchin, Kvothe eventually makes his way to the University, where at the age of 14 he becomes the youngest student ever admitted.  There, he furthers his education in alchemy, magic, etc., gaining friends and dangerous enemies along the way.  In his spare time, he also begins digging into the mystery of why his entire family was murdered.  Throughout the narrative, we also cut back briefly to the "present" timeline, where interesting events are beginning to happen around Kvothe's inn that he maintains.

If it sounds like not a lot happens, for a book of 722 pages, that's because there aren't really a whole lot of big events.  This is very much a character-centric book, with plenty of details and intricacy in the events that do happen.  By the end of the book, Kvothe is still no more than 16 years old, so the slower pacing of the book is important because it allows Kvothe to develop slowly into his hero personality, with the slow progression feeling natural and understandable, given the events.  This is no Harry Potter, with events snapping out every chapter and with the main character an instant hero from page one.  This is a study of the evolution of the hero, with a careful evaluation of every event that made him into the person he is.  Throughout the novel, we get hints of the big deeds that Kvothe will eventually do, but I appreciate the fact that Rothfuss gave us a careful explanation of the character before launching into the big sword-and-sorcery events that made Kvothe a legend.  We also know that something big must be coming in the future books, from cutting back and forth between two timelines.  Somewhere in the trilogy things must go very wrong for Kvothe.  The Kvothe-as-an-innkeeper is clearly a diminished shadow of who he once was, the swaggering confident cheeky Kvothe at 15 years old.

The majority of the novel covers the time that Kvothe spends as a student at the University, learning about magic and every other useful thing a young man might need to know.  Despite this juvenile setting and the  superficial similarity with the Harry Potter series, this is a fairly adult novel, more because of the themes and not because of any particular event.  Since Kvothe is still very young, and the story is told from his perspective, there are no explicit sex scenes.  All of the major scenes of violence are seen by Kvothe in the aftermath, as he was not present when his parents were slaughtered or when the mysterious creatures strike again at a different group of people.  However, because of the fairly slow pacing and the complex characterization, I don't think this is a book that would hold the attention of someone under 15 or so.

I also really enjoyed the system of magic used in this novel.  The magic, called sympathy, involves binding objects together based on the practitioner's understanding of the chemical or alchemical characteristics of the material.  It makes for a very earthy system of magic, with unpredictable results and the requirement that the students of magic are also students of science.  The other element of magic involves naming; when someone knows the true name of something, he can control that thing.  The title of the novel is derived from Kvothe's desire to know the name of the wind, so that he might manipulate it.  I like this throw-back to old magic from legends, where the characters feared to give their true names to magicians, for fear that a magician could harm them with the knowledge of a true name.  Having said this, magic is a fairly minor part of the story, and in this first novel, there is basically no sword play or battling.

I have only two complaints about the book, and both are fairly minor.  The only prominent female character in the novel is something of a cipher to me.  She is Kvothe's love interest (or as much of a love interest as a 15 year old boy might have), and she appears sporadically throughout the novel, sometimes taking an important role and sometimes disappearing after only a paragraph.  I assume that at some point in the future, she will assume a more permanent role, because it's clear that she is intended to be significant; what's unclear is why we should find her important.

My second complaint is that, at times, the writing starts to feel a little self-important or excessively clever.  Some of that might be deliberate, since Kvothe is the story teller and he is certainly self-important and distracted by the magnitude of his own cleverness, sometimes.  It's a minor complaint, however, and does nothing to detract from the story as a whole.

I think the story is best summarized by one of the review quotes on the book's back cover:

"Patrick Rothfuss' debut novel combines the intricate stories-within-stories structure of The Arabian Nights with the academic setting of the Harry Potter series, and transforms it all into a brooding, thoroughly adult meditation on how heroism went wrong."  Onion A.V. Club

The second installment in the trilogy, The Wise Man's Fear, was released on March 1.  I reread this book, having read it first a few years ago, in anticipation of the sequel.  The end of the first book promised a great deal of action and adventure and plot in the second book, so I am looking forward to seeing where all of this wonderful setup is going.

Recommended reading for fans of traditional epic fantasy, such as Wheel of Time, Tolkien, Shannara, etc.

5/5 stars

A Discovery of Witches, by Deborah Harkness

A Discovery of Witches, by Deborah Harkness.  Viking Books, 2011.  579 pp.  978-0-670-02241-0.

... in which a witch and a vampire get caught up with an ancient magical manuscript and trigger a war.

A Discovery of Witches reads like a cross between Twilight, Neal Stephenson, and a history book.  The world is populated by humans, in addition to magical creatures, who comprise ~10% of the world's population.  These magical creatures are the vampires, ancient blood-drinkers with enhanced senses and physical abilities but no magic of their own; the daemons, born to humans but endowed with special intelligence, creativity and foresight; and finally, the witches, men and women with the power to use magic within themselves or to use witchcraft, in the form of spells and potions.  The main character, Diana Bishop, is descended from a long line of powerful witches; her oldest known ancestor was executed in Salem for witchcraft.  When she was seven years old, Diana's parents were murdered in Africa because of their magic.  Diana spends the next few decades swearing to never use her magic.  Now in her 30s, Diana is posing as a human and is at the peak of her highly successful career as a historian focusing on the history of science, particularly alchemy.  One day she is researching in Oxford's library, and she calls up an ancient alchemy manuscript from the stacks.  The text, labeled Ashmole 782, is under a powerful enchantment, and Diana can barely see the words hidden behind layers of enchantment.  Refusing to use her latent magic to unlock the secrets of the books, Diana sends the book back to the stacks.  What Diana doesn't know is that this particular manuscript has been under a powerful enchantment for centuries, and powerfully magical creatures have spent many years searching for it.  When it becomes known to the community of magical creatures that Diana had successfully called Ashmole 782 from the stacks, droves of witches, vampires and daemons descend upon Oxford.

Enter Matthew Clairmont, vampire.  Had Edward Cullen from Twilight been in his 30s when he was turned, rather than in his teens, he could very well have been Matthew.  Matthew also wants the manuscript, but as he gets to know Diana, he also begins to take an interest in her welfare, protecting her from the other magical creatures who would gleefully torture Diana for her scant knowledge of the manuscript.  Events begin to spin out of control, with Matthew eventually forced to take Diana to France when a fellow witch threatens Diana's life.  Intertwined in all of this is, of course, a love story.

I have a hard time forming a concrete opinion of this book.  On the one hand, Deborah Harkness, herself a Ph.D.-holding historian, is a skilled writer.  The prose is highly engaging and all of the conversations and backstory are easy to read.  Despite its length, I read about 3/4 of this book in a single sitting (one of those situations where you intend to read 20 pages and then go to sleep at a reasonable hour, and then you look up and it's 5 AM and you're over 400 pages in).  On the other hand, the book is a little irregular in its pacing and its characters.

The book can be divided into three distinct sections: Oxford, England; somewhere near Lyon, France; and Madison, New York.  In the first part, I enjoyed the discussion of Diana's work, and I liked the descriptions of the Oxford setting.  For the first part of the book, Diana herself is a strong, though sometimes naive, heroine with ambition, smarts and independence.  Perhaps it's just because he's a vampire, but Matthew is, of course, stunningly handsome, dazzlingly intelligent, stupidly rich, etc etc etc.  In terms of vampire fiction, the only thing I can say about Matthew is: I've already read this character in multiple other stories.  The most interesting thing about Matthew is his long history, and as a vampire, he's been around for a very long time and has seen some interesting events and has met some historically interesting people.  The first part of the book, set in Oxford, is pretty light on actual events and dense with conversations, detail and setup.  I enjoyed it a great deal.

When the book's setting shifts to France, we meet more of Matthew's family.  This is where the romance part of the story really starts to take prominence.  Most of the part in France bored me, because frankly there's nothing special about Diana and Matthew's romance, apart from the fact that it's forbidden for a witch and a vampire to be together.  Despite the fact that Matthew brought Diana to France to protect her from people who want to kill her, their time in France seems to be pretty jolly, full of horse rides and other silly things.  This is also the part of the book where the story turns into Twilight, where Matthew is most like Edward, and Diana is most like Bella.  It's a lot of Matthew being stupidly protective and a lot of Diana just going along with what he says and mooning over him.  In Matthew's defense, he was born in an era where knights went to war to protect their womenfolk, and when knights belonged to secret orders and brotherhoods devoted to protecting the weak.  Edward, having been born in the early 1900s, did not have this excuse.  Probably the most interesting part of the French section of the book is Matthew's vampire mother.  Incredibly ancient and incredibly French, Ysabeau is a very nuanced, conflicted character with a lot of events in her past making her the person she is today.  The evolution of her relationship with Diana and her relationship with her son are well done. 

The final part of the book takes place in Diana's home town of Madison, New York, where she was raised by her aunt Sarah and Sarah's partner Emily.  This is probably the most eventful section of the book.  Diana and Matthew are forced to leave France and go to New York to seek the protection of Diana's aunts, who can protect them from their fellow witches better than the vampires could.  This is also the part of the book where events and clues from earlier in the story begin to come together, and we begin to see that the developing conflict is about more than an old manuscript and a forbidden love.  Diana learns some secrets from her past, and also begins to come into her own, by developing her long-dormant powers and asserting herself as an equal to Matthew.  Diana's aunts are well-developed characters, each with her own dynamic and their own place in Diana's life.  Probably the most entertaining character in this part of the book is the house itself, which is sentient and willful and enjoys pushing its residents around to suit its own purposes.

The book ends on a cliffhanger, which is to be expected, as it's the first in a trilogy.  Despite its weak middle section and its hugely boring vampire, it's an engaging read.  It's probably not for people who need a ton of action and battles and such, but its rich details make up for the lack of action.  The witches of the book are a nice departure from Harry Potter, where the magical folk need only to wave a wand and say the right words for results.  The witches in this book use a much more individualized, organic approach, definitely a throwback to the pagan and Wiccan traditions of long ago.  I waver between a 3 star rating (I really did not care for Matthew and the romantic element of the story), and a 4 star rating.  I fell down on the 4 star side because I did enjoy reading it, and I intend to read its sequels.

4/5 stars

4/11/11: Note: rating changed to 3 stars.

Inverted World, by Christopher Priest

Inverted World, by Christopher Priest.  New York Review Books, 1974.  322 pp.  978-1-59017-269-8.

... in which a city built on wheels is slowly pulled north on rails, in order to escape the crushing gravitational field behind it.

Probably one of the stranger science fiction books I have ever read, Inverted World requires a high tolerance for the genre of hard sci-fi.  Hard sci-fi, generally considered to be the branch of science fiction that most deals with actual science, tends to be a little less palatable to the general public because there is less talk of light-speed space ships and aliens, and more talk of the mathematical/physical limitations that the technology of modern man faces.  In keeping with the hard science background of hard sci-fi, Inverted World also keeps with the spirit of classical sci-fi in that it is, at its core, an analysis and discussion of the current human condition, albeit in a stranger setting.

The plot of Inverted World is set in the city of Earth, which is basically a large wooden building on wheels. Although the city itself is "civilized", the land it moves through has been ravaged by some sort of collapse of civilization, and most people outside are living on the edge of survival.  Most of the people in the city are unaware of the true nature of the city; the only ones who are "in the know" are the guildsmen.  The guilds are responsible for keeping the city ahead of the gravitational distortion that is constantly moving, and is currently to the south of the city.  The goal for the city is to reach a point known as the "optimum", where the appropriate balance exists between the gravitational distortions to the south and to the north.  However, since these distortions are always moving, the "optimum" is always moving, and the city is perpetually falling further and further south of it.  The main character, Helward Mann, is a young man who has recently joined the guilds.  Apparently the guilds enjoy teaching through experience, because the norm is to throw the young apprentices into their work with no explanation, and to let them find out the weird truth of reality for themselves.  Over time, as Helward begins to realize just how strange and dire the city's circumstances are, he begins to understand why the secrecy surrounding the guilds exists.  As he begins to subscribe to the guild secrecy and guild doctrine, his new wife, Victoria, starts pumping him for details on why the guilds exist and what it's like outside of the city.  As the city's situation becomes more and more desperate, the people of the city begin clamoring for change, and while outside of the city, Helward meets a young woman named Elizabeth who has an important revelation for Helward and the other inhabitants of the city of Earth.  Although Elizabeth's big revelation is deliberately obvious to the reader from the beginning, it is, of course, a complete paradigm shift for the people of the city.

It's very difficult to describe why the world is distorted, and in what ways the world is distorted, without adding significant spoilers to the review.  I will try to discuss the story without spoilers, but if you are curious, a more thorough discussion is included after the jump below.  Fantastical setting aside, this story could easily be read as a political allegory.  Helward starts out as a bright eyed young recruit, naive to the ways of the world and not quite prepared for the importance of his role in the guilds.  At first, the secrecy seems ridiculous to him, but over time, he falls into a pattern of acceptance of guild doctrine: this is how it was laid down for us, it's always worked, it will always continue to work.  Even as the city erupts into revolution, Helward clings tightly to his outdated doctrine, refusing to believe the news that Elizabeth brings.

The guilds themselves are pretty draconian in the way they deal with both the residents of the city, and the people who live in the lands outside of the city.  Because they need more physical labor than is available in the city, the guilds must employ men from outside the city.  They do this by offering the villages food from within the city, and because the villages are starving, they generally accept the poor offerings.  Even if they didn't accept, the city's militia would soon come through and wipe out any opposition.  Worse, the city's birthrate has become dangerously skewed in favor of male babies, with the estimate at 76 boys to 14 girls currently living in the city's nursery.  Because of the desperate need for females, and because this birthrate bias only exists with women born in the city, the city "borrows" women from the surrounding villages, for the purposes of reproduction.  If the woman gives birth to a girl, the girl stays in the city.  If the woman gives birth to a boy, then the woman can either take the child with her or leave him behind when she is returned to her home village.  The city's imperialistic attitude towards the people around them does eventually come back to haunt him, when the villages around them begin to revolt.  And because the city only moves at a rate of about one mile every ten days, they can't exactly outrun the rioting natives.

I really enjoyed the intricacies of the geometric anomalies that the people of this book encounter; clearly Priest put a great deal of effort into the physical setting.  It adds a great deal of urgency to the city's mission, and explains why the guilds are so dedicated to a system that seems to work, albeit imperfectly.  Like I said before, the majority of the truth that Elizabeth brings to the city is never hidden from the reader, so the ending is not a great twist for the reader.  Because the majority of the book is told from Helward's perspective, and he spends most of his time outside of the city, it's hard to get a continuous picture of the gradual increasing unrest with the city's population.  I would have liked to have seen more of that, because from Helward's perspective, the guilds went from ignoring the dissenters one day, and then pandering to them the next.  Helward's seemingly backwards character development is also frustrating, since he went from questioning the antiquated system to accepting it with zeal.  I suppose this was  a necessary plot element, for reasons that are hard to reveal without ruining the ending, and it served as a good plot device for demonstrating the power of culturally entrenched dogma.  The ending was a little bit of a let down, as it was really open.  We don't know what will happen to the city and its people, now that their world has been turned upside down.  If you're a fan of open endings, you'll probably like this.  I am not generally a fan of open endings, except in special circumstances, so this was a little unsatisfying for me.

In short, this is a really satisfying read for fans of hard sci-fi, and is only slightly diminished by the limited perspective of its main character.  Although it was written in 1974, the writing doesn't feel dated at all, and the subject matter remains as relevant today as it was in the 70s.  For readers who don't have at least a rudimentary understanding of physics, calculus, and geometry, however, this might prove to be a bit of a challenging read.

4/5 stars.  Continue reading for a lengthier discussion of the weird geometry of the city of Earth.  Spoilers!!

Through the Language Glass, by Guy Deutscher

Through the Language Glass: Why the World Looks Different in Other Languages, by Guy Deutscher.  Metropolitan Books, 2010.  304 pp.  978-0-8050-8195-4.

... in which we learn about how perception is affected by linguistics.

Psychologists, linguists, and anthropologists have long stood together in denouncing a possible link between culture/language and a person's perception of the world.  Originally, scientists and politicians would use a culture's "less evolved" language to indicate that the people themselves were also "less evolved."  Deutscher, a linguist, defends his dissenting opinion without coming across as condescending or superior.  The majority of the book focuses on differences in color perception across cultures.  For example, Homer used the phrase "wine-dark sea" to describe the ocean in The Iliad, but it is difficult to believe that the ancient Greeks could not distinguish between wine red and sea blue.  Some cultures consider blue to be part of the "green" section of the color spectrum.  A plethora of other color-related examples are packed into the first half of this book, which demonstrates that the linguistic differences are markers of how cultures divide up their color groups, or how many names they give to different shades of a color, is not necessarily a reflection of their ability to see colors. 

Another section of the book focuses on linguistic differences in directions (north, south, left, right, front, back, etc).  For example, some languages (like English) make it easier to indicate locations relative to the speaker... ie, the book is to my right.  In other languages, it is more common to use common geocentric directions... ie, the book is south of me.  In many of the cultures that prefer to use the cardinal NSEW directions, the people are much more aware of which direction is North.

Overall, Guy Deutscher is a very good writer.  The book is engaging and full of good explanations and amusing witticisms.  It's obviously a very well researched book, with almost 50 pages of end notes and citations.  For the most part, the book doesn't drag, and it's easy for someone not familiar with the intricacies of linguistics to keep up. The book includes several pages of colored panels with diagrams illustrating many of the different concepts; these diagrams definitely add a great deal to the book.  (Note to e-book readers: Apparently the e-book version of this book does not include the color diagrams, which makes it extremely difficult to follow some of the discussions on color.)

My main complaint about the book is that the majority of it is devoted to the discussion of color, from various angles.  Four or five of the nine chapters in the book are devoted to color-related topics.  I suppose that's the easiest topic to discuss from many angles, and it's one of the easier topics to illustrate.  There was one chapter on the spectrum of language complexity ("primitive" vs "developed" or "modern" languages), but it would have been edifying to have more discussion of that, or more of an exploration of the anthropology or psychology side. 

4/5 stars.

The Book of God and Physics, by Enrique Joven

The Book of God and Physics: A Novel of the Voynich Mystery, by Enrique Joven. Harper Collins, 2007. 347 pp. 978-0-06-145687-9.

... in which a Jesuit priest solves a centuries-old mystery.

If The DaVinci Code was based in solid fact, and if Dan Brown possessed any writing skills whatsoever, I suspect that The DaVinci Code would have ended up being a great deal like this novel. The two novels are similar in that both plots revolve around a mysterious religious text. In this case, however, the mysterious text in question is actually real, and is kept at Yale University.

The Voynich Manuscript is a set of handwritten pages from sometime around the early 1400s. It is written in an unidentified language and an unknown script, and has thus far defied every attempt to translate it. Ancient scholars tried, and modern cryptographers and mathematicians and computer scientists have also failed. The manuscript is full of detailed illustrations, and seems to cover many topics, from astronomy to biology to medicine.

The Book of God and Physics is fairly unique, since a great deal of the people and objects and locations in the novel are very real. The only fabrications for the story are the three central characters. The main character is a young Jesuit priest, Hector, who lives in a monastery and teaches physics and math at a Jesuit high school in Spain. In his free time, he joins hundreds of other people around the world in an online community devoted to solving the Voynich Mystery. Along with two friends, Juana from Mexico and John from England, he begins to piece together clues to the manuscript. Over time, they find that the manuscript is very much a part of the Jesuit Order's history. Along with working on the manuscript, Hector must help his fellow priests in saving their monastery from being bought by developers and destroyed to make room for a parking lot. With one of his students, Hector also gets swept up in a research project involving Johannes Kepler and Tycho Brahe, the very famous astronomers of old. The three separate plotlines eventually come together.

I have only a few complaints about the book. The pacing was a little too slow. However, I am at a loss to explain how this problem might be fixed. The issue is that the story involves a very large amount of explanation, including a detailed history of the Voynich Manuscript itself, and a very very detailed history of the lives of Kepler, Brahe, and other historically significant people of their day. As a rough estimate, I would guess that somewhere between 30% and 40% of the book is devoted to historical background. Unfortunately, a great deal of this background is necessary to understand the intricacies of the plot itself. So, if you have little to no interest in people like Kepler and his contemporaries, this is most likely not the book for you. I wish the ending had been a little clearer, and I wish that we'd get to see what the translated Voynich Manuscript says, but since the real manuscript hasn't been deciphered at all, I think it was probably a safe choice to leave that to the reader's imagination. Finally, I feel like something might have been slightly lost in translation, as some of the dialogue occasionally feels artificial. However, that's a trait I notice in most translated works that I read, so I don't consider this to be a significant issue at all.

As for the plot itself, I thought it was nicely developed and I felt like the mystery unfolded well. There were no huge shocks, but nor was it a predictable plot. The main character, Hector, is well developed, and certainly feels like he could be a real person. His friends Juana and John are somewhat less well characterized, but they have far fewer scenes than Hector. In John's case, I don't think the slight lack of development is an issue, but in Juana's case, I could perhaps have used a little more background, especially in light of the directions taken by her character in the latter third of the story.

The intersection of history, science, and religion is very nicely explored in this book. Written by a Spanish astrophysicist with a Ph.D., there is a lot of talk of astronomy and some talk of math and physics. None of this drags the story down; rather, the science nicely accents the plot without dominating. Since Hector is a Jesuit priest, there is the constant backdrop of his religious order, but the religion doesn't dominate the story, and Juana and John are from different religious backgrounds themselves (Juana is evangelical Protestant, and John is an atheist). For those of you who don't know, the Jesuit order in the Catholic church is a brotherhood devoted to education and science. There is some exploration of Protestantism vs Catholicism, but not a great deal and mostly at the end. Unusual for this blog, this book's story and the history explained in it could be one argument for how religion isn't always trying to destroy science. The Catholic Church, under John Paul II, was very accepting of Darwinism and evolution, and the Big Bang Theory, describing the origin of the universe ~14 billion years ago, was actually developed by a Jesuit priest and cheerfully accepted by the Vatican.

In short, if you're interested in physics and astronomy, or in ancient mysteries, or in the Jesuit order, or in people like Kepler and Brahe, this is recommended reading. If you don't care for these topics, though, it could prove to be a ponderous, slow read! Definitely a book for a specific target audience.

"Actually, it is noteworthy that this theory of evolution has gradually entered the investigators' spirits, due to a series of discoveries in diverse fields of knowledge. The convergence of results, in no way intended to provoked in studies conducted independently, is a significant argument in itself in favor of this theory." ~Pope John Paul II, in support of evolution and Darwinism. Qtd page 337 in The Book of God and Physics

4/5 stars.

Death from the Skies! by Philip Plait

Death from the Skies: The Science Behind the End of the World..., by Philip Plait, Ph.D. Penguin, 2008. 326 pp. 978-0-14-311604-2.

... in which we learn about the many ways that the Universe is trying to kill us.

As a geoscientist, I am accustomed to working with time scales and sizes far greater than most people use. I'm used to thinking in terms of hundreds of millions of years, and thinking of things that are many kilometers below the surface of the Earth. However, topics related to astronomy quickly remind me of how ephemeral and puny the Earth really is! Written by the author of the Bad Astronomy blog and website, both of which are highly recommended for anyone with an interest in science and society, Death from the Skies! is a close look at various ways that the planet Earth is threatened by events in space. Covering topics like asteroid impacts, solar flares, supernovae, gamma ray bursts, black holes, aliens, death of the sun, galactic collisions, and the death of the Universe, this is not a book to be read by the paranoid, or the type who subscribe to conspiracy theories, or anyone with a poor understanding of statistics and scientific notation. Below: a gamma ray burst! Beautiful and really deadly. And extremely unlikely to affect us any time soon.


Dr. Plait starts off each chapter with a brief story of what it might be like to be on Earth while these events are taking place. They're grim stories, and really illustrate how powerless we'd be in most (but not all) of these situations. He then goes on to explain the mechanics of each event, and describes the likelihood of each event actually occurring in our lifetimes. Although astronomy seems like a topic that could be difficult to explain to a lay audience, Phil Plait does a fantastic job explaining the physics and math behind various astronomical phenomena. He has a real knack for analogies, so even people without much of a science background get a good idea of the points he is trying to illustrate. Despite the grim theme of the book, Plait actually writes with a great deal of good humor and enthusiasm for his topic. The humor and the well-described science of the book make it an easy read, even for people without much familiarity with astronomy or physics.

The only change I would make would be a slight change in the organization of the book. He explains scientific notation and its importance in the field of astronomy at the very end; I feel like it might have been more useful to have that explanation closer to the beginning, especially for people who haven't used scientific notation in many years. Of course, at some point, it doesn't really matter how much experience you have with it, because the human brain doesn't really comprehend the difference between 10^50 years or 10^100 years or 10^1000 years. At some point, it just becomes a really really big number in your head.

I highly recommend this book to anyone with a passing interest in astronomy... it's accessible for basically all levels, crammed with interesting details, and easy to read. I definitely felt like I learned a lot from it (especially about black holes [see below] and the end of the Universe), and what's more, I enjoyed learning it.

5/5 stars.

Everybody loves black holes!!!!!

Running the Books, by Avi Steinberg

Running the Books: The Adventures of an Accidental Prison Librarian, by Avi Steinberg. Doubleday, 2010. 399 pp. 978-0-385-52909-9.

... in which a disenfranchised, Orthodox Jew, recent Harvard grad finds himself the librarian at a Boston prison.

Avi Steinberg hails from a traditional Orthodox Judaism community. As an adolescent, he aspired to be a rabbi and committed himself to studying the Torah with an intensity that alarmed even his traditional parents. After graduating from high school, he defected from his community by choosing to attend Harvard rather than rabbi school. After graduating from Harvard, Steinberg found that all he had now was a senior thesis on the cultural importance of Bugs Bunny and a reputation at home for being a lapsed Jew. While his childhood friends go on to become doctors and lawyers and rabbis, Steinberg finds himself drifting and, on a whim, ends up answering a Craigslist ad for a post as a librarian at a Boston prison.

In this memoir, Steinberg depicts his life as a librarian for drug addicts, gang members and thugs, pimps, prostitutes, thieves, and various other prison-types. Through his role as prison librarian, he is both a jailer and an ally to the convicts who pass through his doors. He becomes a friend to a female drug addict who abandoned her son when he was an infant, and then ends up watching her son from afar as he is brought into the prison as an adult. He befriends and helps a convicted pimp write his memoirs, and then fights his conscience when he discovers that the pimp was trafficking unwilling, underage girls. He teaches creative writing classes, and tries to convince the male convicts that movie adaptations of Shakespeare's works are just as interesting as documentaries depicting lions tearing zebras into bloody bits.

This could easily have turned into one of those memoirs that is drowning in its own sappiness. Happily, it's not one of those memoirs. Although it has sort of a silly start where the author takes himself a bit too seriously, it eventually settles down into a very readable and touching story, without most of the cheesiness found in memoirs. It has its happy-life-lesson moments, certainly, but it also has plenty of reality check moments and moments where Steinberg is either stupid or an ass. His honesty is really what makes the book... in cases where he could save face by holding back or completely omitting a story, he instead chooses to tell the story with complete disclosure. As a Harvard graduate who'd led a fairly squeaky-clean life, it would have been easy for him to fall into the trap of unconsciously making himself seem superior to the criminals around them. Instead, Steinberg does a nice job of balancing his role as a mentor and also as a naive young adult getting his first taste of the underbelly of Boston.

Recommended reading for people with an interest in books and libraries, crime and criminal justice, psychology, memoirs, or just someone in search of a good read.

5/5 stars

The Lost Gate, by Orson Scott Card

The Lost Gate, by Orson Scott Card. Tor, 2011. 384 pp. 978-0-7653-2657-7.

... in which a boy with forbidden magical powers explores his heritage and achieves the impossible.

Sometimes, I feel sorry for Orson Scott Card. Imagine producing a truly brilliant book early in your career... a book that is soon considered to be a cornerstone of its genre. Now imagine trying to spend the rest of your career trying to match that book, and always falling a little short. Perhaps the best way to enjoy Card's work would be to read Ender's Game last, so as to not build up your expectations.

The Lost Gate is about a boy born into a family of magicians. The magicians left on Earth are divided into clans... the Norths, the Greeks, etc. Our protagonist, Danny, is a member of the North clan. Centuries ago, these families of magicians were revered as gods in their respective cultures... Odin hailed from the North clan, Zeus from the Greeks, and so on. Their power was enhanced by their ability to travel between Earth and their home planet of Westil. They traveled between planets via gates, basically holes that act as teleporters. Think of the "windows" that Will cuts between worlds using the knife in Philip Pullman's book The Subtle Knife. Every time someone passed through the gate between Earth and Westil, their power was enhanced. Unfortunately for all of the Westilians lording it up on Earth, a member of the North clan went around and stole all of the gates, large and small. The gate thief was Loki, the trickster of Norse mythology. This gate thievery led to war between the clans, and eventually gate-magery of any kind was forbidden, since any family to have a gate mage would have access to Westil and therefore would have significantly more power than all of the other families. Poor Danny is born a gate-mage, which is doubly bad since he's a member of the North clan, the clan that started the whole gate-thievery fuss to begin with. Since the tradition is to kill anyone showing any inclination towards making gates, Danny flees his family's compound for the wider world, where he conveniently meets up with a variety of allies who can help him develop his skills. As it usually works in these books, it's a ragtag bunch of people and of course Danny turns out to have the potential to be one of the greatest gate-mages in history.

Interspersed with Danny's story are snippets of the story of a boy on the planet Westil. The boy, named Wad, comes from mysterious origins and also has the power to create gates. He's a kitchen boy working in the castle of the king and queen, and quickly gets caught up in their political intrigue. Eventually, his storyline meets up with Danny's.

I really liked the premise of The Lost Gate. The system of magic is somewhat different than those in current popular works of fantasy, and is quite a bit earthier than the magic in the Harry Potter series. The historical background, with each family being the weaker descendants of god-like magicians, adds a lot of texture to the story and really explains the desperation that the family elders feel when they see the weak magic of the younger generations. I also like how the magic isn't easy... in the Harry Potter books, if you have a wand and know the right movement and the right words, you have instant results. In this book, magic is more of an art form, and each individual has very specific areas of specialty. I would have liked to have the magic a little more explicitly explained, because I'm still a little fuzzy on some aspects, but overall I did like that part of the story.

The weakest aspect of the book is, by far, its hugely irregular pacing. The book lurches along, with important events happening all at once or with sudden jumps ahead in time. There are also fairly long parts of the book that seemed somewhat irrelevant, and mostly served to let us see how clever Danny is. The parts of the book that are set in Westil are more evenly paced, and easier to follow, but the Westilian parts probably only account for less than a quarter of the book.

The other big problem with the book is that very few of the characters are likable. Most of Danny's family is kind of hateful, and since the story is told through Danny's eyes, we don't really know why they're so hateful. And since Card explains that, like Loki, all gate-mages are tricksters and con-men, it just so happens that Danny himself is a little bit hateful. He's arrogant, a little foolish, impulsive, self-centered, and not inclined to take many things seriously, even when other people are putting their lives on the line for him. I guess it's not his fault that he's that way, since apparently that's his predestined personality.

My inclination is to give this book 3/5 stars, because I liked the setting but disliked the pacing and the characters. However, there are a few redeeming things about the book that make me want to bump up the rating. First of all, I am definitely interested to see what happens next, so I will be reading the sequel. If the book is engaging enough to bring me willingly back in for a second installment, then something is going right, I think. I want to see what happens to the characters, and I want to see how the wider effects of Danny's actions affect all of the clans. Secondly, at the end of the book, Danny shows some really genuine progress towards becoming a likable, if flawed, character. Character development is important to me, so if Card is willing to flesh out his characters and show that they're growing in some fashion, then I'm satisfied.

4/5 stars.

American Gods, by Neil Gaiman

American Gods, by Neil Gaiman. HarperCollins, 2001. 588 pp. 978-0-380-78903-0.

... in which the deities of the past struggle to matter and compete with the deities of the present.

Everyone has heard of Neil Gaiman. If you haven't heard of Neil Gaiman, I'm a little surprised that you're the sort of person who reads book blogs. He's certainly a master at taking a theme and running with it in original and spectacular ways. This book is no different.

The book's central protagonist is a man named Shadow. The book opens with Shadow being released a few weeks early from prison, because his wife Laura dies in a tragically pointless way. On his way home for the funeral, Shadow meets a mysterious man named Wednesday. Wednesday seems to know all about Shadow, and offers him a job. Over time, Shadow learns that Wednesday is gathering a mysterious assortment of people who turn out to be ancient gods, brought to America as people immigrated here from various other nations. These gods are kept alive through the strength of their people's belief. Shadow meets an impressive assortment of old deities, from a variety of different pantheons: Norse, Irish, Slavic, Indian, West African, Egyptian... the list goes on. Wednesday is gathering these old weakening gods, and preparing them for a final confrontation against the gods of the present: Media, Internet, etc.

This is a richly detailed book, with a multi-faceted plot where every conversation, every interaction, ends up having significance. I reread this book for participation in a book club (the first time I read it was probably 2003 or 2004), so I don't really remember how surprising I found the twists and conclusion. I think for a detail-oriented reader, or for a reader who is very well-versed in various ancient mythologies, some of the twists won't be a huge surprise. However, I think this is a book where it's not really the shocks and surprises that matter, it's the details and the characters.

Gaiman does a very impressive job with his research. Each god is portrayed as a well-characterized individual, complete with all of the idiosyncrasies that make each god unique. It's fascinating to see how Gaiman portrays each god's survival strategies. For gods that are kept alive through belief, it must be hard on the leprechauns and Basts and Odins of the world to find enough believers to sustain them. For more information on all the gods portrayed in the book, visit this website. Warning: that site is nothing but spoilers. In addition to the wealth of detail on the gods, Gaiman brings a great deal of detail to the setting, making each stop along the journey feel quintessentially American.

Overall, this is a richly detailed book with a compelling plot and a very satisfying ending. Recommended for anyone with a taste for modern fantasy, ancient mythology and theology, or just plain good fiction.

I leave you with some quotations:

Religions are, by definition, metaphors, after all: God is a dream, a hope, a woman, an ironist, a father, a city, a house of many rooms, a watchmaker who left his prize chronometer in the desert, someone who loves you-- even, perhaps, against all evidence, a celestial being whose only interest is to make sure your football team, army, business, or marriage thrives, prospers, and triumphs over all opposition.

Religions are places to stand and look and act, vantage points from which to view the world. p 508


"They never understood that they were here-- and the people who worshiped them were here-- because it suits us that they are here. But we can change our minds. And perhaps we will."
"Are you a god?" asked Shadow.
The buffalo-headed man shook his head. Shadow thought, for a moment, that the creature was amused. "I am the land," he said. p549

5/5 stars

The Dream of Perpetual Motion, by Dexter Palmer

The Dream of Perpetual Motion, by Dexter Palmer. St. Martin's Press, 2010. 340 pp. 978-0-312-55815-4.

... in which Harold Winslow gets his heart's desire.

If you were to get a giant literary blender, combine equal parts from Shakespeare's The Tempest with the steampunk genre, add in a little Jules Verne, a little Franz Kafka, and the tiniest dash of Ovid, you'd get something that roughly approximates this novel. Probably one of the more unusual books I have ever read, The Dream of Perpetual Motion is probably also one of the most lyrically elegiac novels I have ever read.

The story primarily focuses on three characters. Harold Winslow is the son of a hard-working, underpaid man. He is semi-arbitrarily chosen to be the companion to the reclusive Miranda Taligent, the daughter of billionaire genius inventor Prospero Taligent. Set in an alternate 20th century, this is a world of mechanical marvels, including mechanical men, zeppelins, and more. Prospero Taligent is the inventor of many of these marvels, and he and his company ushered in "the age of Machines", following after "the age of Miracles". The story follows a series of events that each take place a decade apart. First, at the age of 10, Harold is invited to a birthday party for Miranda's 10th birthday. At the party, Prospero tells each of the 100 children in attendance that at some point in their lives, he will grant them their heart's desire. At age 10, Harold's greatest wish is to be a storyteller. Harold becomes Miranda's only childhood companion, playing with her in the fake tropical island that Prospero has built on a floor of his 150-story tower. Later, we see a set of events that take place when Harold and Miranda are roughly 20 years old, when Harold has ceased to be a child and Miranda has finally escaped from her gilded prison in her father's tower. Finally, we reach the events that take place when Harold and Miranda are roughly 30, when Prospero's madness has finally reached a peak and Harold feels compelled to rescue Miranda from the terrible fate that Prospero has in mind for her. Underlying the whole story is Prospero's obsession with making Miranda into the perfect woman, and finally achieving his dream of creating the perpetual motion machine. (For those of you unfamiliar with the perpetual motion machine, it's a theoretical machine that pops up a lot in sci-fi and old science writing from the 1600s through the early 1900s. It's a machine that never stops working; in short, energy ouput > energy input. Nice idea, but technically impossible.)

This is an astonishingly poor summary of the plot of this book, as this is a story told in many small fragments, with a wide cast of supporting characters. Palmer borrowed liberally from many other literary works. Besides Prospero and Miranda, other characters from The Tempest make an appearance, including Ferdinand and Caliban. Gods and goddesses from Greek mythology make their appearances, as do characters that are reminiscent of characters you might find in Jules Verne's work, or in other works by Shakespeare. The plot and side-plots all take place against an astonishingly complex cultural background.

Dexter Palmer, who holds a PhD in English literature, is clearly an author who believes that the flow and texture of the story as a whole deserves to be a character unto itself. Probably he has a background in poetry himself; a great deal of the prose in this novel reads like poetry. Flowing, eloquent, and rife with meanings-within-meanings, he clearly put a great deal of thought into the composition of every single sentence. None of the characters are easily quantifiable as particular "types"; there is no obvious hero, no obvious villain. Harold tries to be a hero, but he's really quite cowardly most of the time. Miranda vacillates between being the unattainable virgin queen and being a fallen angel who manipulates to get what she wants. Prospero is both the mad genius who does unspeakably terrible things to his daughter, but only because he utterly, truly loves her, to the point of insanity. Quite a welcome departure from the normal mass-market paperbacks you typically find today, and definitely a refreshing change of pace from standard speculative fiction, where you have the same archetypes and the same plots recycled over and over and over.

One particular thing that must be noted is that this is not a book to read because you just love its characters. I did not find any of the characters to be especially likable; I actually kind of disliked most of them. However, they were complex characters, with complex feelings and motivations, so they certainly felt three-dimensional and their story arcs were all compelling. At the risk of sounding like a high school English teacher, this is a book to be read for its themes and motifs. Some of the major recurring themes:

• Love, in all its incarnations. Parental love, obsessive love, romantic love, childhood love, familial sibling love, Arthurian love.
• Age of Miracles vs Age of Machines. Wonder and beauty and music against science and automation and noise. Human connection in an age of technology.
  
• The nature of art; what makes something "art", and where does art fit in in a world of mechanics and machines?

I think that the whole book can be summed up nicely in this passage:

Two moral forces shaped how we think and live in this shining twentieth century: the Virgin, and the Dynamo. The Dynamo represents the desire to know; the Virgin represents the freedom not to know.

What's the Virgin made of? Things that we think are silly, mostly. The peculiar logic of dreams, or the inexplicable stirring we feel when we look on someone that's beautiful not in a way that we all agree is beautiful, but the unique way in which a single person is. The Virgin is faith and mysticism; miracle and instinct; art and randomness.

On the other hand, you have the Dynamo: the unstoppable engine. It finds the logic behind a seeming miracle and explains that miracle away; it finds the order in randomness to which we're blind; it takes a caliper to a young woman's head and quantifies her beauty in terms of pleasing mathematical ratios; it accounts for the secret stirring you felt by discoursing at length on the nervous systems of animals.

These forces aren't diametrically opposed, and it's not correct tos ay that one's good and the other's evil, despite the prejudices we might have toward one or the other. When we're at our best, both the Virgin and the Dynamo govern what we think and what we do. But the fear that we felt standing in the Hall of Dynamos stemmed from the certainty that the Virgin was in trouble, and that we needed her, just as much as we needed and even wanted the Dynamo. p 186.

In hindsight, this book is very similar to the last book I reviewed, Super Sad True Love Story, despite the fact that in most ways, these books have nothing in common. I promise that this was purely by chance.

In the end, despite this being a beautiful and unusual book, I would hesitate to recommend it to everyone. It is probably too unusual for a lot of readers, and if you require a book that is character or action driven, then this is not the book for you, as this is definitely 100% a concept-driven book.

5/5 stars.

Super Sad True Love Story, by Gary Shteyngart

Super Sad True Love Story, by Gary Shteyngart. Random House, 2010. 334 pp. 978-1-4000-6640-7.

... in which an unlikely couple in the near future embarks on a super sad story of true love.

The problem with lavishly praised fiction is that the reader goes in with absurdly high expectations. Having read reviews of this book in multiple notable sources (The New York Times, Amazon's Editors Picks, Newsweek), I went expecting something brilliant. I was not disappointed.

Set during some undefined point in the near future, the story mostly takes place in New York City, in a USA that is on the verge of collapse. Based on the fact that some of the older characters remember fairly recent real events, I would estimate that perhaps the story takes place somewhere between 2020 and 2040. The USA is so deeply in debt to China that China is considering pulling the plug on the USA entirely. Literacy and education have plummeted, and the USA is totally reviled internationally. Everyone wears a device called an äppärät, which will henceforth be referred to as an apparat because the umlaut is a pain the butt to type. The apparat seems to be some kind of really souped up smart phone, allowing you to shop, watch TV, and learn every single personal detail about the people around you in public places.

Our main characters are a really unlikely couple: Lenny Abramov, the balding 39-year-old son of Russian immigrants, and Eunice Park, the beautiful 24-year-old daughter of Korean immigrants. Lenny works for a company that specializes in immortality, by providing its customers with ultra-purified diets, frequent blood and tissue replacements, and other "solutions" meant to prolong life indefinitely. Eunice is a recent college graduate, with a major in Images and a minor in Assertiveness (ie, a pretty useless degree). Lenny meets Eunice when he is abroad in Rome, and instantly falls in love with her. Despite the fact that Eunice is young and beautiful and fairly shallow, she eventually learns to love Lenny in return. The majority of the novel revolves around their time together in New York City. Most of the story is told in the form of Lenny's diary entries, with part of it told in the form of Eunice's instant messages and emails between her and friends and family.

Probably the most intriguing part of this book is the setting. Definitely intended as a satire, the setting is basically an exaggeration of everything that is wrong with America today. The crippling debt, both individual and national, is the primary characteristic of the nation as a whole. The constant presence of the apparat means that one never has to actually make eye contact or speak out loud to someone else; instead, they can just send them the equivalent of a text message, poor spelling and everything. One of Lenny's more quaint characteristics is his fascination with books, or as they are called at this point in time, printed, bound media artifacts. By this point in time, books are considered smelly annoyances, and reading has become a thing of the past. Instead, you get super-condensed versions of literature delivered to you through your apparat. Yes, this novel is available as a version for the Kindle. If you read it in this format, I sincerely hope it makes you squirm in discomfort. This novel does a really excellent job of exploring themes like consumerism, materialism, immortality, love, immigrant culture, and technology as a substitute for human contact.

Despite the pathetic nature of the setting, the true love that Lenny feels for Eunice is the bright part of the story. Most people form their relationships by getting on their apparat and ranking the people around them in terms of "Fuckability" (hotness), or "Sustainabilit¥" (ie, wealth in terms of the Chinese yuan). What Lenny feels for Eunice goes beyond the shallow concerns of physical appearance and wealth. While the parts of the story told in the form of Eunice's emails are better for illuminating what American culture is like at this point in time, Lenny's diary entries are really the highlight of the story. Although he is certainly naive and idealistic, Lenny's narration of his story is genuinely touching, making him feel like a real human being writing in a diary.

The title for this novel is apt. This is indeed a sad story, both in terms of the lives that Lenny and Eunice lead, and in terms of the depiction of what could very well happen to our culture. And it is certainly a story of true love.

Highly recommended reading for anyone who enjoys satirical fiction, or fiction that's just a little bit off the beaten path.

5/5 stars.

The Dechronization of Sam Magruder, by George G. Simpson

The Dechronization of Sam Magruder, by George Gaylord Simpson. St. Martin's Griffin, 1996. 136 pp. 0-312015514-X.

... in which a scientist from the future accidentally slips in time and ends up in the Cretaceous.

Every now and then, one reads a book that makes the reader simultaneously feel very smart and somewhat stupid. This book is one of those. Written by one of the most celebrated paleontologists to ever live, this novel has an impressive scientific pedigree that's apparent just from reading the author's name on the cover. In addition, the book has an introduction by Arthur C. Clarke (!!!), and an afterword by Stephen Jay Gould (!!!!!!!!!). I don't think you could cram much more nerd/intellectual street cred into a book of this length. So, just by reading a book with these three names on the cover, one automatically feels smart.

The book is really a story within a story. The "outer" story, if you will, involves a group of scholars in the very far distant future. These scholars have no names, and are instead given titles like the Universal Historian, the Pragmatist, the Ethnologist, the Common Man, etc. These scholars are sitting around discussing the curious discovery of stone tablets from the Cretaceous. These stone tablets were engraved with the writings of a man who "slipped" back in time from the year 2162 to 80 MYA. The story within the story, or the "inner" story, is of course the text of these stone tablets.

The scientist who "slipped" is called Sam Magruder, and he was a chronologist, ie, an expert in the study of time. At the time of his accident, he was attempting to differentiate between the concept of linear time vs time-as-a-particle. The Universal Historian describes his studies as the "two time universes. One has motion but is without time dimensions or growth. The other is motionless but has a single dimension and grows steadily in one direction within that dimension" (11). This is where the "this book makes me feel dumb" part comes in, because I had to reread the two pages explaining the time universes multiple times before I really understood it. If you have a good understanding of physics, you might understand it this way: the time-motion universe is akin to the Eulerian description of motion in physics, and the motionless time universe is somewhat more like the Lagrangian description of motion. Sort of. Lagrangian and Eulerian descriptions of motion explained here.

Anyway, so Sam Magruder accidentally finds himself slipping from his lab to a swamp in the Cretaceous. Of course, the time slip only affected Sam himself, and not his clothes, so he not only has to find a way to eat and avoid being eaten, he has to clothe himself and generally keep himself healthy. He knows that there is no way for him to return to his original timeline, so in the interest of science, he records his life in the Cretaceous on stone slabs and hopes that at some point in the future, they will be discovered.

One of the more interesting aspects in the story is how Dr. Simpson's history as a paleontologist really shines through. It is clear that the story is being written by someone who really knows dinosaurs, and knows their anatomy. For the most part, Sam's story reads as a sort of scientific narrative: these are the dinosaurs I have seen, this is what they look like, this is how I avoided being eaten by them. However, in the second-to-last chapter, Sam finds himself pondering some small rodent-like mammals and contemplates himself playing God by selectively breeding them and hopefully speeding up the evolutionary processes that would eventually lead to modern-day mammals. This leads to what is probably the best little bit of text in the whole book:

I have a fair smattering of genetics and of practical animal breeding, learned in citizenship school before I specialized as a chronologist. I toyed long with the idea of selectively breeding the little mammals. I knew their tremendous possibilities, and I have no doubt that I could have speeded up their evolution, perhaps by some millions of years. But for what good? They have the spark, themselves. They are going to make it. Their descendants will be men, and they'll get there under their own power. Interference from one of those same descendants, even as a boost along the way, is not necessary. It would, in fact, be sacrilege. What is holy in mankind is that mankind, through this little beast, and so many others, has created itself. p 102.

The biggest drawback to the book is not really Dr. Simpson's fault. The book was found in his notes by his daughter, who was going through his notes after her father's death. The majority of the story was probably written in the 70s, but between Dr. Simpson's death in 1984 and the time of the book's publication, a lot changed in the field of paleontology. For example, Sam describes the dinosaurs as being incontrovertibly exothermic, ie cold-blooded, when the modern-day general consensus is that dinosaurs were probably at least partially endothermic. There are a few other spots where his knowledge is a little dated, particularly in the nomenclature for certain dinosaurs, but none that really take away from the plot.

The previously mentioned introduction and afterword by Arthur C. Clarke and Stephen Jay Gould are really integral to the reading of this book. Clarke does a remarkable job writing the introduction, making it a discussion of time travel in fiction and reality. Dr. Gould, who was one of the world's most celebrated paleontologists and evolutionary biologists in his own right, wrote a remarkable afterword, discussing the roles of fiction in science, and the dinosaurs, evolutionary theory, and philosophy seen in the book.

Definitely a recommended read, particularly for anyone with an interest in time travel stories, evolution and dinosaurs, or just good old-fashioned science fiction.

5/5 stars.

Veracity, by Laura Bynum

Veracity, by Laura Bynum. Gallery Books, 2010. 376 pp. 978-1-4391-2335-5.

... in which we learn the power of truth and words in an oppressive totalitarian regime.

Set in 2045, the not-too-distant future, the story here revolves around a small resistance group attempting to overthrow the totalitarian government that now controls America. After a disease wipes out half of the country's population in 2012, the federal government gradually expands its power over the people to the point where America is no longer recognizable. Every citizen is implanted with a transmitting device, called a slate. The slate transmits every word ever spoken by that citizen to a central facility, where monitors listen in on every conversation and search for forbidden words. Forbidden words are placed on Red Lists by the government, and whenever a person speaks a forbidden word, they receive a sharp shock in their neck from their slate. If they speak one of the extra bad words, the Blue Coats (government police) come for them, and they are never seen again. Using these methods, the government eliminates entire concepts from the public consciousness. Examples of forbidden words: apostasy, discriminate, ego, fossil, heresy, kindred, obstreperous, offline, veracity. Other small changes are hinted at throughout the book... for example, Washington, D.C. is now known as Wernthal. The President is simply referred to as "President", without the definite article. There is no Congress. The government spends much of its time vilifying a semi-mythical object known as the Book of Noah, supposedly the book that guides the resistance.

The majority of the book follows a woman named Harper Adams. Harper occupies an extremely elite position in the new hierarchy. She is a Senior Monitor, the second highest ranked individual in the country, responsible for monitoring the nation's speech. She also has special abilities, allowing her to read the moods and intentions of people. Harper can see people's "colors", which allows her to know if they're lying, in pain, angry, etc. Because the government's control is so complete and their brainwashing so effective, Harper never really questions her way of life. Sometimes she is disturbed by the brutality of the punishments dealt out to the non-compliant, but she never strays until her best friend, the highest ranked Senior Monitor, is caught working for the resistance. Her friend is killed, and her friend's daughter dies a brutal death. The final straw comes when her daughter's name, Veracity, is added to the Red List. Harper eventually goes to work for the resistance, where she is introduced to strange new concepts like culture, democracy, freedom, etc.

I enjoyed reading this book, with a few drawbacks. I was very interested in the central concept of the book, that by eliminating key words from a population's vocabulary, you can also eliminate whole ideas and concepts. Quite an ingenious way of controlling a population! The rhetoric employed by the government was really unsettling, simply because I can see how effective such speeches could be on a population that knows nothing of free choice. I liked many of the key characters in the book, and the most important ones were fairly well fleshed-out, though some of the secondary characters did seem pretty flat. There were a few pretty interesting surprises, including some of the liberties the government had taken with the nation's history. Also, when we finally get around to seeing the Book of Noah, that's a pretty interesting part as well.

The biggest issue with this book was probably in the explanatory story telling. I never really understood how Harper's special abilities worked, or how certain individuals developed them. My first guess was that the abilities were a result of the Pandemic that wiped out half the population, but that turned out to be an incorrect guess, and it was never really explained. I guess at some point in the near future, humanity will spontaneously evolve so that a few individuals can see energy colors and project their consciousness out to buildings hundreds of miles away. Alright, then. My second complaint is that the ending was muddled. I'm still not really sure what happened, because everything happened pretty fast.

In the end, I would recommend this book to anyone who enjoyed books like 1984 or The Handmaid's Tale.

4/5 stars.

The Unthinkable, by Amanda Ripley

The Unthinkable: Who Survives When Disaster Strikes- And Why, by Amanda Ripley. Crown Publishers, 2008. 266 pp. 978-0-307-35289-7.

... in which we learn about the group psychology of disaster situations.

I found this book in a pile of bargain books at Borders, and as it was cheap and on a topic I'd never studied, I decided to buy it. I'm a little surprised that it ended up in the bargain book section after only being released in 2008.

The book covers the psychology, both individual and group, of people who are caught in disastrous or highly dangerous situations. The majority of the situations were man-made, ie, more situations caused by human error or violence, and fewer situations caused by earthquakes, etc. We learn about the thought processes and physical reactions that different people have to crisis situations, and we also learn how these processes affect the survival probability of an individual. For example, someone like a Marine or Navy SEAL or another person trained to operate under extreme pressure might be physiologically different than your average Joe who might freeze or panic under similar situations.

The author, a writer for Time magazine, did a very admirable job of tracking down survivors of these situations. The interviews given by the survivors were really the key part of the book, but also added to the vague sense of voyeurism lurking in the background. The author herself admits to feeling a bit like a voyeur as well when she was conducting the interviews. For example, we all know the timeline of what happened on 9/11, and we all remember the footage of the towers collapsing, but you don't often hear an account of what it was like to be in one of the towers as events were unfolding. I was morbidly fascinated by the first-hand accounts of the emotions and thoughts of people who were inside the tower. One survivor described feeling an irresistible impulse to return to her desk to fetch her purse, because the whole situation felt so unreal to her.

In addition to reading about how the individual behaves in a situation like that, reading about the group behavior was also interesting, but in an unsettling way. For instance, Ripley writes about some cases where people died at IKEA openings in Saudi Arabia and England. Crowds rushed forward and emotions were running high, and people ended up being trampled, beaten, or worse.

For the most part, I found this an interesting read. The quotes from experts on disaster management, psychology, etc really enhanced the book. However, the whole thing kind of left me feeling a little depressed... mostly because a lot of the problems that occur during a crisis could probably have been avoided. For instance, if anyone in the World Trade Center had been told a) where the stairs are and b) how to behave in an evacuation, how many more people might have made it out? I also gained a pretty healthy respect for police, emergency medical staff, security officials, etc.

4/5 stars